Caring for cats and kittens meant being able to react swiftly to any problems that we noticed during the twice-daily feedings. There was a constant stream of gunky eyes and runny noses (and bottoms) which needed daily cleaning, but there were also one-off situations which required on-the-spot action.

And three examples of these situations were Cetti, Pascal and Lychee, and these are their stories.

Cetti, the son of Dawn, was around three months old and was destined to be the alpha-male of the family group.

He was a strong-willed boy who needed twice-daily eye-cleaning and ointment thanks to a virus which had damaged his sight as a tiny kitten, and, as he grew, it was becoming harder and harder to catch him for his meds. So we had limited time to do what we needed when we noticed one afternoon that there was a piece of straw sticking out of his eye. We had only one chance to try and remove it, and holding him still was a challenge, but luckily we were able to carefully draw the straw out in one piece from under his top eyelid.

A quick rinse with saline solution, and Cetti was as good as new.

Next was Pascal, who was born a few weeks after Cetti, and was Pippin’s son (and thus the great-grandson of The Cat). He and his brother Pascha were partially sighted due to a virus they contracted as kittens and, like Cetti, they both needed eye-cleaning, eyedrops and ointment twice daily.

Of the two brothers, Pascha was destined to be the alpha-male and Pascal was more gentle and affectionate. Twice daily, I would carry Pascal round the garden on our way to treat his eyes and one day I noticed he was staring straight at me rather than looking around. We paused and I asked him if there was something he wanted to tell me, and he tilted his head and shook it vigorously, as though to tell me something was wrong with his ear. When we looked inside, there was an ear of dried grass stuck right down inside his ear – it was hard to spot as Pascal had thick, sandy coloured ear furnishings (as you can see from the header photo). Thankfully he was docile enough to sit still while we delicately removed it with some tiny pliers; it was lucky that Pascal had managed to successfully communicate the problem.

And finally, there was Lychee, daughter of She-ba. Lychee had been left in the garden by her mother as she was terribly ill and required nursing. Sadly, Lychee remained a sickly kitten and cat all her life, although she had some lovely periods of time when she was reasonably well and could enjoy life just like any other youngster.

One day when she was on the feeding station, I noticed something sticking out of her nose. It was hard to see what it was as Lychee was becoming impatient with the endless nose-wiping and eye-cleaning to which we had to subject her. She was too frail to be restrained to have a good look, so I followed her round the garden for a while, and observed that there was a blade of grass sticking out of one nostril. Cornering her and trying to remove it was not easy; it must have felt horrible to her as it was several inches long – in fact we removed it in two pieces in the end, rather than distress her too much.

These are just three examples of the variety of problems which cat colony carers come across – every day is different, and you never know what crisis you might have to deal with next.